Odd's hand started to disappear again in Yumi's math class. He'd made sure nobody saw, but he was starting to get why Yumi was so annoyed with William dogging her all the time. He was struggling to shake the kid's attention. He'd had to fake a sore throat to get out of the pop quiz and practically sprinted to the manhole cover the gang used as a shortcut to the factory. Yumi's long legs were much faster than Odd's. He'd texted the group on the way over to meet him at the passage to the factory, it seemed like the fading was getting worse.
"No one noticed anything in class?" Jeremie confirmed with Odd.
"No, they were all concentrating on the maths quiz." Odd shook his head. Yumi's hair gently hit him in the face. It was weirdly itchy and kept getting all over the place, he'd be glad when he got into his own body and could just spike his hair away from his face again.
"Huh? There was a maths quiz this morning? Did you manage?" Yumi asked Odd.
"Well, if you mean sharpening my pencils and all that, yeah." Odd shrugged. She was a whole year ahead of all them, the only ones who could have passed that test were the resident geniuses, Aelita and Jeremie.
"What do you think the problem is, Jeremie?" Aelita asked the nerdy teen as he stooped to lift the cover to their secret sewer passage.
"Odd and Yumi have been rematerialized in bodies that aren't their own, and so they aren't stable." He shoved the manhole aside and began his descent down the rusty ladder.
"And…?" Ulrich prompted.
"If we don't take care of the problem immediately, their atoms might split."His head disappeared down the dark hole.
"W-What do you mean our atoms might split?" Odd stammered.
Jeremie's voice echoed up from the hole, "Complete disintegration."
Odd should have been more scared. He knew he should. A therapist would probably angrily insist he should have some sense of self preservation. But they faced life threatening challenges on a weekly basis. He'd become nearly numb to the constant attacks, danger almost didn't feel real anymore. They'd been in a constant loop of defeating Xana and going back in time since Jeremie discovered the super computer and it always felt like they had a second chance if they really messed up. School and grades and even social interactions didn't feel that serious when you had a big glowing reset button. Granted he'd always had his own body to come back to in the end. Even if they went back to try to fix things, he and Yumi could still remain permanently switched at this rate. Maybe he'd be able to finally have a shot with the tragically straight Ulrich and maybe he wouldn't feel like he needed to hide being attracted to boys but...Odd wasn't sure that's a life he wanted to live. Not in someone else's body at least. He'd be replacing Yumi. He wouldn't see his parents again, and they wouldn't see their real daughter. He didn't know what would happen to Kiwi, the Ishiyamas probably wouldn't let him adopt a random dog, and it wasn't like he could ship him off to live with his parents and five sisters. Kiwi would never know a moment's peace. And most of all he couldn't suffer through one more minute of Yumi's incredibly boring maths class again.
Ulrich was tossing and spinning his sabre gracefully between both hands in the brief wait between virtualizations. Odd only caught the tail end of it while he was still being rendered into Lyoko, but the flashing blade looked incredibly impressive. Sometimes watching Ulrich just being himself would bring Odd back to the first day they met and he couldn't think of anyone in the world who could be cooler than Ulrich.
Odd hit the ground wobbling in Yumi's heels. Normally he didn't have much of a problem in the ice sector in his usual flat shoes, but the added obstacle of heels was really throwing him off.
"Now let's hear it for...Catwoman?" Yumi experimentally flexed Odd's pawed hands, extending and retracting the claws.
Odd tried to take a few experimental steps and his ankles twisted harshly, causing him to fall flat on Yumi's back. Aelita, Yumi and Ulrich laughed for a moment before Aelita pointed out the nearest tower.
Odd brushed himself off and tried to run along with the others. He lagged behind, still having difficulties in the unfamiliar body and heels. Even Aelita overtook him! If he got his body back he probably wouldn't hear the end of it. The three teens watched their pink haired friend disappear into the tower like they had many times before.
There was a brief pause, uncommon in the normally action packed Lyoko. They were normally trying to stop some sort of crisis when they were there, it was strange to not have to do anything for a moment.
Until they were reminded of the crisis that brought them there.
Yumi and Odd's bodies began to fade in and out of existence once more. Ulrich looked between the two, confused. This was the first time their whole bodies had disappeared, and by Odd's guess, the longest so far. "I hope Aelita makes it fast! This is turning into an emergency here!"
Their bodies slowly became corporeal again as an ominous skittering grew closer. The sound of lasers pierced the air, Xana had just noticed their presence. Yumi tried one of her signature cartwheels, only to land on her knees, off balance from her lower center of gravity. She tried to reach behind her back for her fans only to find Odd's flicking tail.
"Kankrelots, thats all we need!" Ulrich withdrew his sword from its sheath in a swift motion.
"Gee thanks for the heads up Jeremie!" Odd groused.
"Sorry! But watch it. Whatever happens, Odd or Yumi can't be devirtualized. If they go, it's bye-bye for good!"
Odd reflexively tried to aim his fist to fire a laser arrow and came up empty handed. "Oh no, I forgot." The kankrelots, seizing their opportunity, began focusing their blasting in his direction. Odd ducked and rolled, skidding on his butt in front of Ulrich.
Ulrich effortlessly deflected a blast from one of the monsters and looked down to check on Odd.
Odd, embarrassed, shrugged and tried for a dismissive smile but it came out sheepish. Why did he always have to look like a clown in front of Ulrich?
The three ducked for cover behind a small drop off in the ice by the tower. Running from kankrelots of all monsters was embarrassing, but with two fighters out of commission and one stuck babysitting they were struggling much more than usual.
Ulrich waited for a lull in the blasts and jumped over the ledge, breaking into his signature super sprint. Normally Odd wanted to show off for his friends, but he figured until he knew what he was doing it was better to let someone who wouldn't die for real take the lead.
Yumi tried to aim her fist at the monsters in a poor imitation of her friend. "Odd how do these arrows work?" She ducked down to avoid a laser that Ulrich hadn't been able to deflect.
"W-well, imagine you're firing. You concentrate a little bit and bingo! It fires."
Ulrich slashed the target on a kankrelat and it exploded in a shower of red and white sparks.
Yumi pointed her fist at Odd "Like this?"She fired off an arrow that Odd just barely avoided. "Hey!"
"Oops! Sorry."
Odd turned his finger against his head, gesturing for Yumi to use her brain. Never aim a loaded weapon at something you don't intend to hit.
The second kankrelat started to wander closer to Yumi's head, intending to wipe her, and Odd's body, off the face of Lyoko. Ulrich super sprinted past and sliced clean through it.
He looked at the two peeking up at him from behind the ledge. "Thank you for caring." He panted. Running circles and getting shot at was starting to take its toll.
"We're doing all we can you know!" Odd argued. Just because Odd liked to watch him work out, didn't mean he liked it when his own life was technically on the line. The longer they were switched and the longer Aelita took trying to fix the bug, the more he was starting to get a bad feeling about everything. Lyoko always had a way of making a bad situation worse somehow.
Aelita frantically rushed from the tower, pulsations rippling out from the exit she made. "Hurry, we have to get to Sector five!"
"Huh, but what for?" Odd asked while climbing out from behind the ledge. At least he was getting better in his heels.
"I'll explain on the way, I'm bringing up your vehicles." Jeremie's disembodied voice echoed around them.
As they rode to the edge of the ice sector, Jeremie let them know about the program being run by inhibitors thingies that were located in sector five or...something? Odd often didn't understand what Aelita and Jeremie were talking about when they got really engrossed in their techie talk.
"Are you absolutely sure we have to go to sector five?" Yumi asked from where she was seated on the overboard. She'd decided pretty early on that balancing on a floating death trap with no handlebars was not going to happen. Personally Odd loved the rush, the overwing was far too tame in comparison.
"We don't have time for me to try and crack the millions of codes to find those inhibitors! Remember, if you don't get back into your own bodies quickly, it means disintegration."
Aelita and Ulrich look over at Yumi from where they rode on Ulrich's overbike and made some passing quips. Odd had been trying to ride ahead so he would quit imagining being in Aelita's place. Sometimes he wished his own vehicle would get devirtualized so he could wrap his arms around Ulrich's chest and feel the rev of the bike beneath them.
They pulled up to the edge of the sector as Jeremie entered the code "scipio" to call up their transporter. A floating white ball materialized in the sky above them, beginning it's slow descent.
There was a rumbling in the ground and a harsh click from behind the four fighters. Ulrich was the first to react, his natural super speed in Lyoko heightening his reflexes. "A megatank!" he warned.
Quick as Odd in the cafeteria on meatball day, Ulrich charged the megatank, thrusting his sword deep inside its target as it sliced a wide arc through the air with a fanned laser. Ulrich was immediately and unceremoniously devirtualized in a series of pixels that floated away into Lyoko's digital sky.
That was the last thing Odd saw before the transporter scooped him up and sped away.